Thursday, January 17, 2008

Lymphocytes

Received a few verbose emails on various new policies and their justification (excuse ?). This kind of mail - and memo - is all too common nowadays; a few of the senior officials are well known to be keen on polishing their English and training front-line staff on cursory reading.

Is it an effective way of administration ? Many believe so. To someone with immunology background, they are walking (writing ?) examples of B lymphocytes that hide themselves in the marrow (i.e. their office) and keep producing immunoglobulin - and try to make things happen in a distance.

The more important way of body defence - alas, communication - is, as we all know, T lymphocytes that talk to each other and their targets face-to-face.

Well, B cells without helper T cells are rather useless - they just produce the same email (antibody) without class switch. Unchecked B cell activity without T cell control either produces too much immunoglobulin and attacking their own self (autoimmune disease), or it being a malignancy.

1 comment:

KM Chow said...

A piece of educational writing indeed.

The best way to tackle an immune disorder, as most of we know, is "tolerance".

So, forgive - or, to be exact, forget about - them.